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I’ve just returned from Auckland, New Zealand, where I attended the extraordinary Global Speakers Summit of 2018. While there, I connected of course with a number of high profile speakers, authors, and several extremely talented Game Changers working in their particular areas of expertise, determinedly changing the world one speech, connection, or radical idea at a time. It was heady stuff being in surrounded by so many extra-ordinary people, and I learned so much in a short few days.

I have attended the GSS before, and also several of the GSS member country events since 2002. What I find most fascinating about these events, is the fact that we all have quite varied expertise, and while many authors were there, just as many of them were in the dark about how to really make their books ‘pop’ from the platform. So I’m going to share a handful of tips I was discussing with people this past weekend and hope you find it helpful next time you’re on stage and have the chance to promote your book(s) or products from the stage – even if you are not supposed to be doing that as part of the speaker deal you agreed to.

Promoting Your Book From the Stage

Get your book on Amazon – ASAP – and do it well. Ensure you also have an author page, linked to your book, and tell people to follow you there – as well as having a link to that page from your website so anyone visitng your page can immediately see ALL your Amazon featured products.

Get the book you most want to promote for the event you are at, into a top 10 position for the event, so that if anyone seeks it, they will be able to see immediately that you are ranking well for your book- this adds to your credibility.

Create a TINY URL (using Bitly or Tiny URL) so that the very long Amazon link looks less like THIS: https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Author-ity-Publish-Non-Fiction-Business-ebook/dp/B00MVUP53Y/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1519689463&sr=8-1, and more like THIS: https://tinyurl.com/FI2ABook

Use this URL in your PowerPoint slides and handouts, and tell people you have many notes and resources, available FREE in your book ( the one that is most relevant by topic to the audience/speech du jour) and direct them to that link, for a limited time – ie 24 or 48 hours only.

Tell your audience that if they would like to grab a copy of your book – free – that you’d also appreciate them taking a few minutes ‘next week’ to review your book on Amazon – because reviews are highly valuable for you as an author, (it’s called Social Proof) and perhaps even offer to run a webinar the following week FREE for those who do post a star rating and reveiw comment… even IF they rate your book poorly for any reason. Why? Because this helps them to get busy, take action, and gives them a chance to give you honest feedback – which you can then address and take action on if necessary.

Ensure they know the importance of dropping you a note after posting their review for getting the free webinar details. This helps to ensure you also get their email addresses for remarketing. You may also like to offer a link to sign up for a special website page where all this is confirmed and clarified in case of any confusion.

Target your promotional links to your book on which ever Amazon country you most wish to have increased rankings in. There are 12 countries you can do this with. So example if you are speaking in Australia, link from the Australian Amazon.com.au if you are speakng in the UK, link from the Amazon.co.uk site.

If you do all of these things well, over that 24-48 hour, or specified date – if your book is set to launch on a specific date – your Amazon rankings and sales will increase for a few days – which is an ideal situation for you in terms of ongoing marketing with Amazon books. But that’s a topic for another blog.

I know that’s seven steps, and not six easy steps for promoting your book from the stage, but here’s one more BONUS for you:

BONUS tip: Put the link to your book on the bottom of your emails and send it to everyone who gave you a business card at the event. And even repeat the FREE day for another 24 hours only a few days later – to help capture more people- and make that a shareable link for people to share if they are talking about you and your presentation to their friends or colleagues after the conference.

This extra surge should offset the spike in sales or downloads giving you a slightly better edge with Amazon’s algorithms, which are set to detect single spikes in activities.

If you need help with more on Amzon, or to get your book ranking better on Amazon – let me know.

If I had a dollar for every time I was asked one question back in 2010, I’d have retired already. That question was, ‘how do I get my books on Amazon?’

Back then I’d usually answer with, ‘Why Bother?’

The bricks and mortar stores in Australasia were still selling books, albeit, not terribly well. However, many were closing, and most had diversified beyond selling books, and had ‘warehouse sales people’ behind their counters, many of whom were far from passionate about books, and were unable to be of much help if the requested book by a customer ‘wasn’t in stock or on the computer yet’. Add to that, due to the sheer volume of books available, book store owners and managers were simply challenged beyond believe to know what might be worth stocking and what might gather dust and end up heavily discounted a few months later. It was hit and miss to stock shelves, and Indie Authors missed out most of the time, as much due to the quality of their books, but also due to the lack of sales channels that led them easily to get their books noticed by buyers.

Amazon was equally challenging back then, because due to their own internal rules about needing to have enough stock on hand to supply orders quickly, the warehousing of books and distribution channels meant that if you didn’t have some kind of managed warehousing of your books based in the northern hemisphere, you would likely be rejected by Amazon anyway.
Forward to 2017 and all the rules have changed. Now, it’s easier than ever to upload your books to Create Space, Ingram Sparks, Barnes and Noble, Nook, Kobo, Kindle. E-books can be sold via Kindle within minutes of being uploaded, and Create Space can fill orders within days of your setting up an account.

The quality of print on demand is outstanding, and the need for warehousing hundreds or thousands of copies of your books has gone. No more expensive outlays for authors to stock printed copies, fulfil their own orders by lining up at the post office. The royalties are paid when and as expected, with full reporting functions built into all of the platforms available to sell on.

So, what’s the problem with all that?

Ignorance mostly.

Authors are still struggling to know what to do, how to do it, and the learning curves around uploading can be fraught with deep time-wasting pits of despair. It takes time, and a lot of reading the fine print and understanding the process to do your first upload onto either Create Space or Kindle. Working out how to price your book, determine the best categories and why this is important, and even understanding the special ways that Keywords work for or against your book’s success takes time and knowledge.
Unfortunately, the average newbie author often does not see the value in paying for expert help, despite the fact that they are now saving significant amounts on the production and printing of books. And this is the one thing that needs to change for authors, especially in Non-Fiction genres. Getting armed with the knowledge needed to do this well, is as critical an investment in publishing a book as editing and cover design is.

Being an author is time consuming, often for low returns, and yet is one of the most creatively rewarding things a writer can do. Seeing others benefit from your shared stories, wisdom, experiences is priceless and getting those reviews that mean you know you’ve contributed valuable knowledge to someone anywhere in the world is heart-warming to say the least. Getting those checks from Amazon is also pretty exciting. But if we’re all going to do it well, and ‘ace it on Amazon’ we have to start approaching the technical ends of publishing. That means paying for expertise sometimes, just as you would for social media specialist work, and design skills.

In 2018, I challenge all authors to up-skill – not by diversifying their studies across too many publishing topics, but mastering one or two necessary areas, and sharing that knowledge with others. That will still keep the overall cost of successfully publishing down to an acceptable level for most indie authors – and make it even more viable to pay for the specialist areas you need to dive into occasionally.

One thing that I’ve learned through nearly a decade of working in the book business, is that you can never have too much help to market your work. So I’m going to share with you some of my favorite author tools – and some of these are recently discovered.

Scrivener: I can not rave on enough about this program. I have introduced it to a number of people and they all say the same thing… it makes the planning and writing so easy! If you do not yet have Scrivener, or are curious about it because you have heard about it being one of the very best tools ‘on the planet’ for authors, then check this out. You can also enjoy 30 days (not just consecutive calendar days either) for FREE, then it’s only the cost of coffee and cake with a couple of friends to get it after that. (Use this link to get the free 30 days option… )

First:Booklaunch.io is far and away the VERY best landing page platform imaginable for authors. These make launching a new book so easy, and they look great too.

Second: if you are into technology, or not even hugely so but know it’s a necessary way to bring customers to your door, then you have to spend some time on these platforms:

Amazon – create an Amazon Author page – it’s easy, powerful, and you’ll love what you can do with it to help drive book sales and awareness campaigns.

Twitter – yes it does work, yes it is worth working hard to get followers, and yes you do need to post regular updates on it. This is not a passive platform, but when you work it well, it starts to really create buzz around your books. My Twitterfeed is here for my author page.

Mobile Apps – I’ve had one of these for my business alter-ego Maria Carlton Marketing Coach for years, and it’s been a great way to ensure I could share information with clients and promote my brand to prospects, but since that was created the technology available to create these apps has become outstanding. I’ve just discovered COMO and within hours have created an app that features my books, my services, and my links to all other platforms I use for marketing.

Amazon Marketing Services: If you want to really ramp up your Amazon sales and promote free books or special offers, you can’t go past AMS. It’s easier to use than Facebook Marketing options, and dedicated to book sales. It’s still relatively new, so lots of beta testing still going on as they refine and improve, but well worth being an early adopter for this. Here’s the link.

One thing to remember when it comes to marketing tools for authors is that people want to engage with you, and you want to reach out and engage with them. These tools help you do this easily. But you have to work on these constantly – just like that great novel you’re working on marketing is a constant work in progress.

And like my old mate Winston Marsh always says – you have to be a better marketer of what you do than a doer of what you do! When it comes to effectively marketing your books – both non-fiction and fiction – you have to build a following. Branding is critically important and so is having a great marketing strategy that keeps you focused on the best results oriented social media options to suit your product.